Another Plane Has Disappeared From Radar July 24 '14- Air Algerie

[MorningSong]

I just heard about this on the RAI italian news:


Air Algerie plane disappears from radar
Posted: Jul 24, 2014 11:41 AM Updated: Jul 24, 2014 12:42 PM



ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Authorities say a flight operated by Air Algerie carrying 110 passengers and a crew of six has disappeared from the radar on a flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers.

The official Algerian news agency said air navigation services lost track of the Swiftair plane 50 minutes after takeoff - at 0155 GMT. Flight AH5017 had been missing for hours before news was made public.

Swiftair, the private Spanish airline, confirmed that 116 people were aboard.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

An Air Algerie flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers has disappeared from radar on a flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers, the official Algerian news agency said Thursday.

Air navigation services lost track of the plane 50 minutes after takeoff early Thursday, last sited at 0155 GMT, the agency said.

"In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie has launched its emergency plan," the agency quoted the airline as saying.

The flight path of Flight AH5017 from Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso, to Algiers was not immediately clear.

Ougadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali where unrest continues in the north.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

http://www.8newsnow.com/story/26099731/air-algerie-plane-disappears-from-radar



Air Algerie plane disappears from radar
Posted: Jul 24, 2014 11:41 AM Updated: Jul 24, 2014 12:24 PM


ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - An Air Algerie flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers disappeared from radar early Thursday, the official Algerian news agency said.

Air navigation services lost track of the plane after 0155 GMT, or 50 minutes after takeoff, the agency said. That means that Flight AH5017 had been missing for hours before the news was made public.

"In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie has launched its emergency plan," the agency quoted the airline as saying.

The flight path of the plane from Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso, to Algiers was not immediately clear.

Ougadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali where unrest continues in the north.

However, a senior French official said it was unlikely that fighters in Mali had weaponry that could shoot down a plane. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak for attribution, said the fights have shoulder-fired weapons which could not hit an aircraft at cruising altitude.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

http://www.wdrb.com/story/26099731/air-algerie-plane-disappears-from-radar

[Roisin]

ALGIERS, Algeria — An Air Algerie flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers disappeared from radar early Thursday, the official Algerian news agency said.

Air Algerie plane disappears from radar

Air navigation services lost track of the plane after 0155 GMT, or 50 minutes after takeoff, the agency said. That means that Flight AH5017 had been missing for hours before the news was made public.

“In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie has launched its emergency plan,” the agency quoted the airline as saying.

The flight path of the plane from Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso, to Algiers was not immediately clear.

Ougadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali where unrest continues in the north.

However, a senior French official said it was unlikely that fighters in Mali had weaponry that could shoot down a plane. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak for attribution, said the fights have shoulder-fired weapons which could not hit an aircraft at cruising altitude.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/air-algerie-plane-disappears-from-radar/2014/07/24/7b977d0a-1317-11e4-ac56-773e54a65906_story.html

------------------------------------------------------
Missing Air Algerie flight: Live updates as plane vanishes off radar with 116 on board


The disappearance of the Air Algerie plane comes a week to the day after the Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash in which 298 people died.

Yesterday a plane came down in Taiwan came down killing at least people.

There are unconfirmed reports coming in that the plane has come down in Niger.

China's CCTV news and Nine News Australia have both said that the plane came down near Niamey.


It is now being reported that the plane may have come down during a violent thunderstorm.

The Air Algeria plane is believed to have been diverted due to poor visibility.

It is reported that there was a risk of it colliding with another plane flying from Algiers to Bamako in Mali.


It is believed there were 80 French passengers on the plane, en route to Paris.

The six crew members are thought to be Spanish

The plane has now been confirmed as a McDonnell Douglas MD-83.



http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-air-algerie-flight-live-3905531#ixzz38NpnfOPQ
Follow us: @DailyMirror on Twitter | DailyMirror on Facebook

[SilentFeathers]

another diverted flight....hmmm?


The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route.
Contact was lost after the change of course.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/algeria/10987946/Air-Algerie-plane-disappears-with-116-on-board-live.html

An unnamed source within Air Algerie told the AFP news agency: "The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route."

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/59637/missing-plane-flight-ah5017-vanishes-en-route-to-algeria#ixzz38NtAnDav

ADDED:

I reckon France should of banned the sale of those warships to Russia as Cameron suggested?????


"There were likely French people on board, and if there were French people on board there were certainly many of them,"Frederic Cuvillier told reporters.
http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/europe/story/likely-many-french-missing-air-algerie-flight-minister-20140724


At least 50 French nationals were on the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 plane that was operated by Spanish airline Swiftair, an Air Algerie representative told reporters at a press conference in Burkina Faso.

Unconfirmed reports from Spanish TV news stations and Algerian journalists quoted by France's BFM TV said there were 80 French nationals on board the jet.
http://www.thelocal.fr/20140724/french-among-passengers-on-missing-air-algerie-flight

[Roisin]

Below is a list of commercial airliner crashes or disappearances that had fatalities 50 or over for the years 2011, 2012, 2013, and those we've had so far in 2014.

24 July 2014; Air Algerie Flight AH5017 116 passengers.

23 July 2014; TransAsia Airways ATR 72-500; B-22810; flight GE222; near Magong, Taiwan: The aircraft was on a scheduled domestic flight between Kaohsiung and Magong, Taiwan. The airplane crashed into a residential area near the airport during a go around following an attempted landing at Magong, Taiwan, which is on Penghu island. Of the four crew members and 54 passengers, at least 48 occupants were killed. At least five people on the ground were also injured. There was heavy rain in the area at the time of the crash.

17 July 2014; Malaysia Airlines 777-200ER; 9M-MRD; flight MH17; near Grabovo, Ukraine: The aircraft was on a scheduled international flight between Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The aircraft in cruise at about 33,000 feet when it experienced a catastrophic in flight breakup. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members were killed.

8 March 2014; Malaysia Airlines 777-200; 9M-MRO; flight MH370; unknown location: The aircraft was on a scheduled international flight between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Beijing, China and went missing while en route. The current status and location of the aircraft, along with that of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members who were on board, is unknown. While it is believed that one or more military radar systems in Malaysia detected the aircraft heading back in the direction of Malaysia, there was no corroborating information such as communications from the pilot or information from the aircraft's transponder associated with that radar data.

17 November 2013; Tartarstan Aircompany 737-500; VQ-BBN; flight 383; Kazan, Russia: The aircraft was on a scheduled domestic flight from Moscow to Kazan, Russia, and crashed during a landing attempt. Early reports indicated that it was at least the second landing attempt. All 44 passengers and six crew members were killed in the crash and subsequent fire.


16 October 2013; Lao Airlines ATR 72-600; RDPL-34233; flight QV301; near Pakxe, Laos: The aircraft was on a scheduled domestic flight from Vientiane, the capitol of Laos, to Pakxe in southern part of the country. It crashed into the Mekong river during its approach and sank. The crash occurred about eight kilometers (five miles) from the airport. All five crew members and 44 passengers were killed.


3 June 2012; Dana Air; MD83; 5N-RAM; flight 992; Lagos, Nigeria: The aircraft was on a scheduled domestic flight from Abuja to Lagos, Nigeria, and crashed in a residential area near the airport. The plane reportedly struck a power line and then crashed into at least one apartment building. The aircraft was completely destroyed in the crash, and all seven crew members and 146 passengers were killed. At least 10 people on the ground were killed as well.


20 April 2012; Bhoja Airlines; 737-200; AP-BKC; flight B4 213; Islamabad, Pakistan: The aircraft was on a scheduled domestic flight Karachi to Islamabad, Pakistan, and crashed in a residential area near the airport. The aircraft was completely destroyed in the crash, and all six crew members and 121 passengers were killed. Among those killed were several children and one newlywed couple. This was the airline's inaugural flight on this route.


8 July 2011; Hewa Bora Airways 727; 9Q-COP; flight 952, Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo):The aircraft was on a scheduled domestic flight from Kinshasa to Kisangani, DR Congo when it crashed after missing the runway during a landing attempt. The aircraft came to rest about 300 meters from the runway. At the time, there was heavy rain, limited visibility, and thunderstorms in the area. According to a report about the crash in the Aviation Herald, the runway had no published instrument landing procedures. The aircraft was destroyed in the crash. Five of the seven crew members, and 72 of the 108 passengers were killed.


9 January 2011; Iran Air 727-200; Flight 277; Urmia, Iran:The aircraft was on a scheduled domestic flight from Tehran to Urmia, Iran when it crashed near the destination airport. Ten of the 11 crew members and 67 of the 94 passengers were killed.

http://www.airsafe.com/events/last_15.htm

[thunder24]

the picture of the algiers plane, has similar red an blue markings as Putin and Malaysia flights.... just to note
http://news.yahoo.com/air-algerie-plane-disappears-radar-093929878.html

[truth4me]

Last 2 planes numbers end in 17....

[SilentFeathers]

Last 2 planes numbers end in 17....

These now 4 flights in 2014 total up the dead and missing to 711

This latest flight took off at 0117 (711 backwards) with 116 aboard, which inverted and backwards is 911..........weird, but of course it's probably all just coincidence.

[Sunny-side-up]

Well all I can say is, you won't catch me flying on a plane that has any numbers, date and or time with 17 init!

[panopticon]

Page from BBC with updates on missing flight AH5017.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28465010

-- Pan

[myriaddimension]

This does not seem like a coincidence anymore. Three planes have disappeared eerily in the last 4 months, and I have started to wonder why.

[SilentFeathers]

Just another "coincidence", U.S. planemaker McDonnell Douglas, is a part of Boeing.

Here's a report that it has crashed in the Niger River...

http://www.newsdzezimbabwe.co.uk/2014/07/plane-crashes-into-niger-river-116.html


The plane crashed after passing the capital of Niger and it is presumed all 116 people on board have been killed. The flight was said to have been found near Niamey, the capital of Niger.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/breaking-air-algerie-flight-ah5017-crashes-niger-due-bad-weather-1458125

[Billy]

Algerian official confirmed that plane has crashed in south Mali. They are not sure if this was due to bad weather or if it was shot down.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/algeria/10987946/Air-Algerie-plane-disappears-with-116-on-board-live.html


Latest

14.18 A fuller passenger list has been published by official Algerian news agency APS.

The list of passengers includes 51 French, 27 Burkina Faso nationals, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, five Canadians, four Germans, two Luxemburg nationals, one Swiss, one Belgium, one Egyptian, one Ukrainian, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian and one Malian, Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo said.

The six crew members are Spanish, according to the Spanish pilots' union.

[Hervé]

Last 2 planes numbers end in 17....


24 July 2014; Air Algerie Flight AH5017 116 passengers

There must have been a stowaway passenger hidden somewhere... sadly.

[MorningSong]

Here's Reuter's account:


Missing Air Algerie plane from Burkina Faso has crashed: Algerian official

By Hamid Ould Ahmed

ALGIERS Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:28am EDT


(Reuters) - An Air Algerie flight crashed on Thursday en route from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Algiers with 110 passengers on board, an Algerian aviation official said.

There were few clear indications of what might of happened to the aircraft, or whether there were casualties, but Burkino Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedrago said it asked to change route at 0138 GMT (9.38 p.m. EDT) because of a storm in the area.

"I can confirm that it has crashed," the Algerian official told Reuters, declining to be identified or give any details about what had happened to the aircraft on its way north.

Almost half of the passengers were French citizens, an airline official said.

Two French fighter jets based in the region have been dispatched to try to locate the airliner along its probable route, a French army spokesman said. Niger security sources said planes were flying over the border region with Mali to search for the flight.

Algeria's state news agency APS said authorities lost contact with flight AH 5017 an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso, but other officials gave differing accounts of the times of contact, adding to confusion about the plane's fate.

Swiftair, the private Spanish company that owns the plane, confirmed it had lost contact with the MD-83 operated by Air Algerie, which it said was carrying 110 passengers and six crew.

A diplomat in the Malian capital Bamako said that the north of the country - which lies on the plane's likely flight path - was struck by a powerful sandstorm overnight.

Whatever the cause, another plane crash is likely to add to nerves in the industry after a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine last week, a TransAsia Airways crashed off Taiwan during a thunderstorm on Wednesday and airlines canceled flights into Tel Aviv due to the conflict in Gaza.

An Air Algerie representative in Burkina Faso, Kara Terki, told a news conference that all the passengers on the plane were in transit, either for Europe, the Middle East or Canada.

He said the passenger list included 50 French, 24 Burkinabe, eight Lebanese, four Algerians, two from Luxembourg, one Belgian, one Swiss, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian, one Ukrainian and one Romanian. Lebanese officials said there were at least 10 Lebanese citizens on the flight.

A spokeswoman for SEPLA, Spain’s pilots union, said the six crew were from Spain. She could not give any further details.

REGIONAL SEARCH

Swiftair said on its website the aircraft took off from Burkina Faso at 0117 GMT (9.17 p.m. EDT) and was supposed to land in Algiers at 0510 GMT (1.10 a.m. EDT) but never reached its destination.

An Algerian aviation official said the last contact Algerian authorities had with the missing Air Algerie aircraft was at 0155 GMT (9.55 p.m. EDT) when it was flying over Gao, Mali.

Aviation authorities in Burkina say they handed the flight to the control tower in Niamey, Niger, at 1:38 a.m. (09.38 p.m. EDT). They said the last contact with the flight was just after 4:30 a.m. (11.30 p.m. EDT).

Burkina Faso minister Ouedrago said the flight asked the control tower in Niamey to change route at 0138 GMT (9.38 p.m. EDT) because of a storm in the Sahara.

However, a source in the control tower in Niamey, who declined to be identified, said it had not been contacted by the plane, which in theory should have flown over Mali.

Burkinabe authorities have set up a crisis unit in Ouagadougou airport to provide information to families.

Issa Saly Maiga, head of Mali's National Civil Aviation Agency, said that a search was under way for the missing flight.

"We do not know if the plane is Malian territory," he told Reuters. "Aviation authorities are mobilized in all the countries concerned - Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Algeria and even Spain."

Aviation websites said the missing aircraft, one of four MD-83s owned by Swiftair, was 18-years-old. The aircraft's two engines are made by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies (UTX.N).

U.S. planemaker McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing (BA.N), stopped producing the MD-80 airliner family in 1999 but it remains in widespread use. According to British consultancy Flightglobal Ascend, there are 482 MD-80 aircraft in operation, many of them in the United States.

"Boeing is aware of the report (on the missing aircraft). We are awaiting additional information," a spokesman for the planemaker said.

Swiftair has a relatively clean safety record, with five accidents since 1977, two of which caused a total of eight deaths, according to the Washington-based Flight Safety Foundation.

Air Algerie's last major accident was in 2003 when one of its planes crashed shortly after take-off from the southern city of Tamanrasset, killing 102 people. In February this year, 77 people died when an Algerian military transport plane crashed into a mountain in eastern Algeria.

(Additional reporting by Patrick Markey, Daniel Flynn, David Lewis, Mathieu Bonkoungou, Julien Toyer, Tracy Rucinski, Laila Bassam, Marine Pennetier and Tim Hepher; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Alison Williams)

[Natalia]

~delete~ ...

[Violet]

? What is this

[SilentFeathers]

If true we actually have a witness that seen it "falling" from the sky....


A missing Air Algerie plane with 116 people on board was seen "falling" in the region of Gossi, in northern Mali, the head of the emergency investigation into the flight said on Thursday.

"A witness informed us they had seen the plane falling at 0150 (GMT and local time Thursday)," said General Gilbert Diendiere, coordinator of the crisis unit established in Ouagadougou to try and find the jet.

"We are in contact with the witness and we intend to survey the site" to verify the information, he added.

"We believe this information is accurate as we have compared it to radar images showing the flight path until the plane disappeared," Diendiere said.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/air-algerie-fight-seen-falling-northern-mali-official-175840231.html#6DBuuoy

[MorningSong]

Here are some bits from the Telegraph page covering updates on the plane cras:



18.52 Mali's president has said wreckage of the Air Algerie flight has been spotted between northern towns of Aguelhoc and Kidal, according to Reuters.


19.00 President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said the wreckage of a missing Air Algerie flight had been spotted in his country's desert north, Reuters reports.

"I have just been informed that the wreckage has been found between Aguelhoc and Kidal," Keita said during a meeting of political, religious and civil society leaders in Bamako.

He did not give any more details.


19.22 According to French President Francois Hollande, the pilots had decided to divert from their route due to "extremely difficult weather conditions", AP reports. We recently heard from the President of Mali who has said wreckage was spotted between two northern towns in his country.


19.31 Efforts to reach the wreckage could prove perilous as it lies right in the heart of the Tuareg uprising and Islamist activity that has brought chaos to northern Mali, reports Hannah Strange.

Efforts to reach the wreckage could prove perilous as it lies right in the heart of the Tuareg uprising and Islamist activity that has brought chaos to northern Mali.

The area around the towns of Kidal and Aguelhoc is a key stronghold of the Tuaregs and the centre of a recent upsurge in fighting between government forces and the separatist MNLA. In May, the convoy of Prime Minister Moussa Mara came under attack during a visit to Kidal, triggering fierce clashes in which 50 troops died and leading the government to declare itself once again "at war" with the MNLA.

A ceasefire was later agreed, but that has been broken by several outbreaks of fighting including battles less than a fortnight ago in the desert between Kidal and the city of Gao to the south which killed at least 37.

As well as confrontations between the MNLA and government troops, infighting amongst separatist factions and clashes between the Tuaregs and their former Islamist allies have brought further bloodshed to the northern region.

Government representatives and separatist representatives recently opened peace talks in Algeria though as with previous negotiations, there are doubts whether they will bring an end to Tuareg uprising.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is active in the area, as are other Islamist groups, while the Tuaregs remain in control of Kidal, Aguelhoc and a number of other towns in the area. The government claims the Tuareg are still backed by AQIM and other Islamists, though the separatists largely deny this.


20.54 According to Henry Samuel in Paris, there is speculation the plane crash might have been an act of terrorism.

Kidal is the birthplace of a Tuareg uprising that plunged Mali into chaos in 2012, leading to a coup in the capital Bamako and the occupation of the northern half of the country by militants linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

A French-led intervention last year dispersed the extremists, but the Tuaregs still pose a serious threat in the north, as do a string of other fractious Islamist groups.

While AH5017 clearly changed direction due to bad weather, some experts doubted a storm could have caused a crash.

Jean Serrat, a former airline pilot, said the causes were more likely to be “either a terror strike on board” or a missile strike like the one that brought down MH17 last Thursday, killing 298 people – 194 of them Dutch.

Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, said: “We cannot, we must not rule out any theory before having all the evidence at our disposal.”

Between the last two updates there was this that I jumped over, since I initially thought it "off topic":


19.50 According to Reuters, the Mali government and northern rebels say they have signed an agreement in Algiers on the roadmap towards a peace deal


20.01 The Malian government and six rebel groups signed an accord on an end to hostilities as part of ongoing peace talks that opened in Algiers last week, AFP reports.

A ceasefire has been in force with the mainly Tuareg and Arab rebel groups since a last eruption of fighting in May.

The two sides also signed a roadmap aimed at "putting in place a framework for the peace talks to allow the emergency of comprehensive negotiated settlement."

The signature of the two documents marked "a satisfactory result with which to crown the initial phase of the dialogue", Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra said in a short statement.

The talks, which opened on July 17, are to resume next month aimed at reaching an agreement by the autumn on power-sharing short of secession.

While separatist demands have officially been dropped by the rebel Tuareg groups attending the talks, they are demanding greater autonomy or a special status for northern Mali, known by the Tuareg as Azawad.

After inflicting a "major defeat" on the Malian army in the Tuareg region of Kidal in May, the rebel movements now occupy nearly two-thirds of the country's territory and are in a position of strength in the talks, according to the Algerian hosts.

Now, isn't that interesting... another war zone, another call for peace, another plane crash that will necessitate a ceasefire to get to the crash site.... hmmmmm....

[Slorri]

Crashed 24-07-2014 enroute OUA-ALG operating flight AH5017. Contact was lost about 50 minutes into the flight and aircraft reportedly crashed between Gao and Tessalit (Mali) with 116 people on board including 6 crew members.

http://www.planespotters.net/Production_List/McDonnell-Douglas/MD-80/53190,EC-LTV-Swiftair.php

[Slorri]

This airplane, "EC-LTV", was delivered to Air Algerie on 2014-06-20, and is now at status "written off".

http://www.airframes.org/reg/ecltv

[Violet]

Sad day...Meanwhile the Netherlands are still receiving their victims from the Ukraine daily, until the weekend. Tomorrow another ceremonial welcoming of the next 70 coffins. Sincere condolences to anyone related or befriended with anyone that was present on any of all these crashed flights.

[Slorri]

Narrative:
A McDonnell Douglas MD-83 passenger plane, operating on a flight for Air Algérie, was reported missing during a flight from Ouagadougou Airport (OUA), Burkina Faso to Algiers, Algeria. Air Algérie reported that there are 112 passengers and seven crew members on board. Swiftair earlier reported a total of 116 occupants.

Flight AH5017 departed Ouagadougou at 01:17 UTC (and local time). It was expected to arrive at Algiers at 05:10 UTC. Last contact was 50 minutes after departure.
The airplane had been leased from Spanish airline Swiftair for the Summer season.
The commander of a Timbuktu-based operation with the U.N. mission in Mali reported that the plane crashed between Gao and Tessalit, Mali. French media later quoted sources stating the plane came down north of Aguelhok.

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20140724-0

[SilentFeathers]

They blasted the MSM with seculation about MH17 30 seconds after it crashed and didn't stop for days! This time they know where it is and have witnesses but are withholding info for some reason.

I just went to paste a section of an article that claimed a villiager walked up to the crash site and then called officials....well, that paragraph mysteriously vaporized from the article and doesn't exists anymore. There's some monkey business going on with this crash too, something weird has happened to this flight too IMO.

ADDED: We are in a weird cycle that has become a series, my intuition says something even bigger may happen real soon, and my gut is telling me to watch Israel.

[Snowflower]

The "other shoe about to drop" feeling has me nearly paralyzed.

[ghostrider]

Me fears that complete control of the sky and Airports will ramp up to a level we never imagined ...

[TigaHawk]

Tiga's Maths!

Fish and Bird die off's the last few years.

Weather too.

Now we have planes falling out of the sky.

Add them all together and you have..... the sun and/or our magnetic field.

17 is my lucky number :( grrrr.

[KiwiElf]

Well it's interesting to note the increasing number of injuries occurring through turbulence-related flying incidents, and the growing number of flights re-routed due to bad weather.

The large majority of airplane accidents are caused by human or pilot error (ie bad weather and the pilot's choice to unwisely land, take-off or fly through it). Airline travel is still the safest way to go, (but it's a myth to apply that "factoid" to small/light aircraft, which are statistically considered to be about as dangerous/safe as motorcycles. SOURCE: FLYING magazine).

Whoever OK'd the Taiwanese flight which crashed a few days ago for example, was just plain foolish; airliners are not designed to fly, let alone land or takeoff in 70 mph winds!

[MorningSong]

Update: The plane has been found:


OUAGADOUGO, Burkina Faso (AP) — An Air Algerie jetliner carrying 116 people crashed Thursday in a rainstorm over restive Mali, the third major international aviation disaster in a week.

The plane, owned by Spanish company Swiftair and leased by Algeria's flagship carrier, disappeared from radar less than an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso's capital of Ouagadougou for Algiers.

French fighter jets, U.N. peacekeepers and others hunted for the wreckage of the MD-83 in the remote region, where scattered separatist violence may hamper an eventual investigation into what happened.

It was found about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the border of Burkina Faso near the village of Boulikessi in Mali, a Burkina Faso presidential aide said.

"We sent men, with the agreement of the Mali government, to the site, and they found the wreckage of the plane with the help of the inhabitants of the area," said Gen. Gilbert Diendere, a close aide to Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore and head of the crisis committee set up to investigate the flight.

"They found human remains and the wreckage of the plane totally burnt and scattered," he said.

He told The Associated Press that rescuers went to the area after they had heard from a resident that he saw the plane go down 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Malian town of Gossi. Burkina Faso's government spokesman said the country will observe 48 hours of mourning.

Malian state television also said the debris of Flight 5017 was found in the village of Boulikessi and was found by a helicopter from Burkina Faso. Algeria's transport minister also said the wreckage had apparently been found. French officials could not confirm the discovery late Thursday.

"We found the plane by accident" near Boulikessi, said Sidi Ould Brahim, a Tuareg separatist who travelled from Mali to a refugee camp for Malians in Burkina Faso.

"The plane was burned, there were traces of rain on the plane, and bodies were torn apart," he told AP.

Families from France to Canada and beyond had been waiting anxiously for word about the jetliner and the fate of their loved ones aboard. Nearly half of the passengers were French, many en route home from Africa.

French President Francois Hollande said after an emergency meeting in Paris that the crew changed its flight path because of "particularly difficult weather conditions."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, his face drawn and voice somber, told reporters earlier that "If this catastrophe is confirmed, it would be a major tragedy that hits our entire nation, and many others."

The pilots had sent a final message to ask Niger air control to change its route because of heavy rain, said Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo.

French forces, who have been in Mali since January 2013 to rout al-Qaida-linked extremists who had controlled the north, searched for the plane, alongside the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA.

Algerian Transport Minister Omar Ghoul, whose country's planes were also searching for wreckage, described it as a "serious and delicate affair."

The vast deserts and mountains of northern Mali fell under control of ethnic Tuareg separatists and then al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremists after a military coup in 2012.

The French-led intervention scattered the extremists, but the Tuaregs have pushed back against the authority of the Bamako-based government. Meanwhile, the threat from Islamic militants hasn't disappeared, and France is giving its troops a new and larger anti-terrorist mission across the region.

A senior French official said it seems unlikely that fighters in Mali had the kind of weaponry that could shoot down a jetliner at cruising altitude. While al-Qaida's North Africa branch is believed to have an SA-7 surface-to-air missile, also known as MANPADS, most airliners would normally fly out of range of these shoulder-fired weapons. They can hit targets flying up to roughly 12,000-15,000 feet.

The crash of the Air Algerie plane is the latest in a series of aviation disasters.

Fliers around the globe have been on edge ever since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in March on its way to Beijing. Searchers have yet to find a single piece of wreckage from the jet with 239 people on board.

Last week, a Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down while flying over a war-torn section of Ukraine, and the U.S. has blamed it on separatists firing a surface-to-air missile.

Earlier this week, U.S. and European airlines started canceling flights to Tel Aviv after a rocket landed near the city's airport. Finally, on Wednesday, a Taiwanese plane crashed during a storm, killing 48 people.

It's easy to see why fliers are jittery, but air travel is relatively safe.

There have been two deaths for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights in the last decade, excluding acts of terrorism. Travelers are much more likely to die driving to the airport than stepping on a plane. There are more than 30,000 motor-vehicle deaths in the U.S. each year, a mortality rate eight times greater than that in planes.

Swiftair, a private Spanish airline, said the plane was carrying 110 passengers and six crew, and left Burkina Faso for Algiers at 0117 GMT Thursday (9:17 p.m. EDT Wednesday), but had not arrived at the scheduled time of 0510 GMT (1:10 a.m. EDT Thursday). It said the crew included two pilots and four flight attendants.

The passengers included 51 French, 27 Burkina Faso nationals, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, five Canadians, four Germans, two Luxembourg nationals, one Swiss, one Belgian, one Egyptian, one Ukrainian, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian and one Malian, Ouedraogo said. The six crew members were Spanish, according to the Spanish pilots' union.

Swiftair said the plane was built in 1996, with two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-219 PW engines.

Swiftair took ownership of the plane on Oct. 24, 2012, after it spent nearly 10 months unused in storage, according to Flightglobal's Ascend Online Fleets, which sells and tracks information about aircraft. It had more than 37,800 hours of flight time and has made more than 32,100 takeoffs and landings.

It was the fifth crash — and the second with fatalities — for Swiftair since its founding in 1986, according to the Flight Safety Foundation.

The MD-83 is part of a series of jets built since the early 1980s by McDonnell Douglas, a U.S. company now owned by Boeing Co. The MD-80s are single-aisle planes that were a workhorse of the airline industry for short- and medium-range flights for nearly two decades. As jet fuel prices spiked in recent years, airlines have rapidly being replacing the jets with newer, fuel-efficient models such as Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s.

There are 496 other MD-80s being flown, according to Ascend.

___

Corbet reported from Paris. AP journalists Aomar Ouali and Karim Kebir in Algiers, Algeria, Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Spain; Elaine Ganley and Thomas Adamson in Paris, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/air-algerie-plane-disappears-radar

[Slorri]

Plane has gone from 10 000 meters to zero in three minutes.

Reportage : la chute du vol AH5017 a été "vertigineuse", selon Ouagadougou
CD04sCDZoA4

[Slorri]

Conveniently the tape recorder was broken :rolleyes:


Air Algerie AH5017 black box tape 'unintelligible'

Damaged tape
The voice recorder used magnetic audio tape - common to older aircraft - but this was found broken and had to be repaired, Remi Jouty, president of France's BEA air accident investigator, told reporters at a press conference on Thursday.

"There is sound on the tape but it is unintelligible," he said.

"The device seemed to be recording but we don't yet know why it did not work, except that this was not a result of the crash itself," Mr Jouty said, adding that it may have been caused by a "simple technical problem".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28694545


The system of using magnetic tape has since been replaced by digital technology in modern aircraft :sing:

[Slorri]

Cause of fatal Mali air crash still a mystery: probe (http://www.france24.com/en/20140920-cause-fatal-mali-air-crash-still-mystery-probe/?aef_campaign_date=2014-09-20&aef_campaign_ref=partage_aef&ns_campaign=reseaux_sociaux&ns_linkname=editorial&ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter)